this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Aotearoa / New Zealand

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Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!

Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!

Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.

So, how’s it going?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I know I keep talking about Kereru but last night on the way home from work one crash landed in a shrub like three feet from me and started feeding and by the gods they look ridiculous up close with their tiny heads and huge bodies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

We have a couple that hang out on the power lines near home - watched one calmly fall off the other day, plummet to the ground and perform a very sketchy crash landing in the nick of time. Gorgeous idiots lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's awesome! We had one come and land in our flowering plum tree a couple of days ago. They are so heavy, the whole tree bends. And this is a mature, decades old tree.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I love those bumbling idiots. My favourite is when my dog starts barking at them, and they just completely ignore her.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thinking of building a modest home gym with a squat rack.

Though it needs to go on carpet, but I'm not so keen on the idea of having plywood directly on carpet (especially in the rumpus), with possible issues with moisture and mold etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about getting those rubber gym floor tiles? I've seen those sold at a few places.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was originally planning on a couple of sheets of ply, and then the rubber floor tiles on top, but was worried about the large contact patch on top of the carpet.

So have been thinking about adding some of those outdoor/wet area flooring tiles that have holes in them, to add some air circulation to the carpet?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you meaning to put the squat rack on top of all that? I would just use mats under the weights for deadlifts etc. or is this just a half rack without spotter bars and you're worried about dropping the weights?

Is the room particularly humid or has no windows/ventilation?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was thinking of getting something like this https://solidstrengthequipment.co.nz/solid-strength-squat-rack/, and have that mounted on top of the Platform to keep it secure.

Platform for securing the rack, but also to prevent damaging the carpet too much, and provide a nice base for lifting.

Not particularly humid, has windows and all that, and a heat pump, but it is on the ground floor with a concrete sub, so it does feel a bit more humid compared to upstairs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I highly recommend getting one with spotter bars or adding spotter bars if you can, especially if you lift alone. I used to have a similar one with spotters that I used on carpet, it didn't seem to do much damage, but maybe you're way stronger than me :)

That store has some nice looking stuff. I'm still mad about No. 1 Fitness being bought by Torpedo7 all those years ago. They always had a good varied range with good prices. Torpedo7/TWG bought them and then never carried as much range as No. 1 Fitness did.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah - Went in to Torpedo7 over the weekend to just see what the quality of some of their stuff was like, and they don't even have floor models of most of the stuff they have online.

IRT the spotter bars, I did get into the habit of benching without collars so that in the event I did fail, I would be able to slide the weights off (as I got into the habit of going to the gym at hours where there would be no-one else - though that never happened). Would eventually like to get a full Power Rack, but that's obviously quite a significant investment, and I'd like to start off a little bit smaller than that :)

Interesting with the carpet. You didn't notice any "Pot holes" forming in the carpet where your feet were always landing during lifts?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That makes sense with benching. I was always hesitant to try for 1-rep maxes alone at home without some kind of safety. It did feel like I sometimes didn't push myself as hard as I could. I don't really do any weightlifting any more, even though I probably should.

Honestly I don't remember, it was quite a few years ago in a different house. I eventually upgraded to something more like this in the garage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anyone got a suggestion for a 2 player board game?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One Deck Dungeon is a fun cooperative dice game. You each pick a class, then have to battle your way through a dungeon. I'm a little hazy on the mechanics, tbh, but I have positive memories from playing it with a friend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the suggestion! I guess the next question is where's a good place to buy board games 😆. Normally I've got them from Mighty Ape but they don't seem to have this one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, you want games you can actually play?

I'd suggest Cerberus or Game Kings, but it looks like they're both out if stock (and GK isn't taking orders?).

Hopefully someone else has more accessible suggestions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@[email protected] I got my Arlec plug working with LocalTuya, thanks for the help!

It looks like cumulative power use is still an issue - as in it can tell me how much power is being used right now, but can't say how much has been used today so far. In the thread you linked they had the same issue, so perhaps this plug doesn't support it.

Does Home Assistant support some way of doing this manually? If we have the history, is there a template that can sum the history for a certain period or anything like that? I think because it's poling it wouldn't be super accurate but it might be something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's great! From that thread, it sounds like the cloud based app integration does have that feature. I don't have any of these devices so can't play around with it.

It looks like the Utility Meter integration is the way to go. But you could also setup your own Template sensors to sum it up, here's a couple of threads that could lead you down the right track:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-sum-energy-and-power-sensors/172779

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/power-consumption-sum-of-multiple-sensors-entities/266660

I can't be of more help than that, as I don't use any power monitoring at the moment!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for pointing out the Utility Meter integration. So much to learn!

Unfortunately, I spoke a bit too soon. It seems to display current ok, but power just shows as 0W all the time, and voltage was previously showing ok but now is just constantly saying 1.0V. Gonna have to play around a bit more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe something to do with the polling? I notice under the documentation for LocalTuya in the section "Energy monitoring values":

On some devices, you may find that the energy values are not updating frequently enough by default. If so, set the scan interval (see above) to an appropriate value. Settings below 10 seconds may cause stability issues, 30 seconds is recommended.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I'll have another read of the docs. I've messed something up, values don't seem to be updating anynore and turning it on/off doesn't work, though it says it's connected.

I did work out I had the voltage set to the wrong sensor. So that got sorted once I fixed that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just leaving a comment for future reference, as I want to get some Arlec gear up and running via Tuya on HA in the near future :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Check out this comment chain that has a lot more info.

P.S. you can save posts. On the website, click the dots next to the reply to comment button, and there's a star in there for saving. To find your saved posts, go to your profile page and there's a tab for it (only visible to yourself).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ooh, didnt realise that was even available on Lemmy lol - Thank you for that, will come in handy :) And thank you for linking that other thread too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have so many saved posts!